Open Thread Holiday Weekend

August signs
MIKE Ritchie, watching the severe weather conditions on America’s Eastern seaboard, tells us: “Hurricane Irene has been downgraded to a Scottish summer.”
http://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/comment/ken-smiths-diary/the-diary-1.1120751

Can anybody recommend scientific literature on Younger Dryas? No CAGW trash, please. Thank you, Taras.

I have posted to YouTube the video of the recent Australian debate on the question “Do We Really Need a Carbon Tax?”

My own take is that the side in favor didn’t really engage the issues. Ian Plimer is the only panelist who really addressed scientific issues, and was (as I would expect) dismissed out of hand with no substantive response by the opponent who followed. Lord Lawson did a respectable job on the negative side, although I thought he blundered early on by saying that anyone who believes CO2 is “pollution” should not be listened to. In some idealistic sense this could be true, but the assertion does seem to negate the possibility of dialogue or debate in the first place.
In any case, I thought it was a worthwhile debate. I was rather disgusted by the description given on the ABC _Big Ideas_ web page, which among other outrages called Plimer a “climate-denying geologist.” Here’s their description:
Do We Really Need a Carbon Tax?
23 Aug 2011, 11:00
Claiming that places like the ABC were not giving equal time to those who dissent from the prevailing science around the climate change debate, the conservative think tank The Institute of Public Affairs decided to host their own event in partnership with The Spectator Australia. The question they posed was straightforward and simple: “Do we really need a Carbon Tax?”
The local participants included a climate change researcher, a climate-denying geologist, plus former party leaders of both Liberal and a Labor. But, the star of the show was a British Lord – not Monckton, but former Thatcher-era Energy Minister, Nigel Lawson – who happens to be a real member of the House of Lords. (He is also father of celebrity cook, Nigela Lawson.)
Lord Lawson has spent the past decade warning of the perils of decarbonising the economy, arguing that government policies to replace relatively cheap carbon-based energy with substantially more expensive renewable energy amount to economic illiteracy of the worst order.
Chairing the debate was conservative commentator Tom Switzer.
Speakers For:
John Hewson is the former leader of the Liberal Party and an economic and financial expert with experience in academia, business, government and the financial system. His current position is chairman of insurance broking firm General Security Australia.
Benjamin McNeil is a senior fellow at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales.
Mark Latham is a Spectator Australia columnist and former federal Labor leader.
Speakers Against:
Lord Nigel Lawson is a former Thatcher-era Energy Minister and British Conservative chancellor. He is author of “An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming”.
Ian Plimer is a geologist at University of Adelaide and author of “Heaven & Earth”.
Gary Johns is associate professor at the Australian Catholic University and former federal Labor minister.
Chair:
Tom Switzer is a research associate at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney where he teaches undergraduate courses in American politics and Australian history. He is also editor of The Spectator Australia, published in London.
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/bigideas/stories/2011/08/23/3299165.htm

Jim Cole says:September 2, 2011 at 5:32 pm
Just saying, but it seem reasonable that aging trees with lots of extra-large leaves might be susceptible to toppling in mediocre windstorms.
In my area, I think the fact that the utility company (PSNH) mostly stopped doing right-of-way tree maintenance several years ago is more significant. Since the PUC won’t penalize them for outages, it’s cheaper for them to skip expensive maintenance.

I live in a country that has NOT experienced any man made climate change, How is it that we effect other countrys climates?

I took off my training wheels and started a climate science thread over on a Microsoft web site if anyone wants some weekend amusement see here:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/Scientists-prove-Global-Warming-caused-by-the-sun-not-humans

The Solar Wind bz has tilted primarily north, and the gcr’s are once again climbing back up.
The SORCE spacecraft is showing some mighty strange readings. So much so, that the data and instrument are scheduled for a hard look Sept. 26. Maybe it got whacked out there, and the thing has gone haywire. Send up the replacement.

Dear Roy,
Not being internet savvy(me I mean) what do you think would be the best way to do this?
I hear what you’re saying though!
Thanks.

Ken Smith says:
September 2, 2011 at 6:08 pm
Watched all four. Thanks Ken.

Some interesting thoughts from Martin Durkin.
THE REAL GLOBAL WARMING CONSENSUS (or ‘Why Intellectuals Hate Capitalism’)

The market is based on merit. Success is determined by how highly people value what you have to sell. The intellectuals, whose talents are not highly valued, yearn for a society based on status. This is why the Green intelligentsia fetishise hierarchical pre-capitalist society. This kind of society, they assert, was more ‘natural’ and ‘ordered’ and ‘harmonious’.
Today, the bulk of intellectuals in the ‘New Class’ work directly or indirectly for the State. They are paid out of taxes levied on the productive economy. In other words, the plumbers (and bricklayers and lorry drivers and estate agents) are forced to pay for them. No wonder the plumbers do not turn up at Green demonstrations to demand higher taxes and more state control.

It has been a fascinating few weeks watching the ups and downs of the Arctic ice.
I confess I’ve been doing this while watching the ups of the English Cricket team and the downs of the Indian one, but all of that might change starting this weekend with the one day matches.
From the NOAA drifting North Pole camera it would seem that the new freeze season has set in. The melt ponds seem to be freezing over:
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/latest/noaa1.jpg
And the temperatures recorded by the Polar Area Weather Station ( PAWS ) Buoy
Buoy ID 420120 seem to be consistently negative now:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/PAWS_atmos_recent.html
Looking at Dr Ryan Maue’s 2 metre temperature animations also hints at a start to the freeze up:
http://coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/temperature/gfs/arc_t2m.html
It will be interesting to see how this will all be spun over the next few weeks. An obvious death spiral has not happened, that is a fact. We might see, by a small amount, a new low in ice extent, though that will be touch and go over the next few weeks. A lot of slush type ice (shuga and grease ice) has been reported this year; it will be interesting to see if this accelerates ice growth in the new season.
As I’ve had time to follow the Arctic ice this summer, it has been a revelation to me, just how much the extent is weather driven. It has got me wondering just how much of the Arctic ice is really dependent on the climate and how much is at the mercy of unpredictable weather events?
As for Arctic ice volume, well that’s for the modellers to argue over.
Odd how no one from the AGW crowd seems to be able to explain why the Antarctic ice is not melting away, or is the physics too difficult and the data not matching the models?
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png

Charles Nelson – Presumably you have already picked up “A Chronological Listing of Early Weather Events” (pdf). Maybe you should get together with its author to produce an even bigger collection … or perhaps specialise in events after 1900 (where that one stops). But that pdf by itself casts a very harsh and unforgiving light on any claim that there is anything “unusual” or “unprecedented” in current conditions.

There might be a problem!
http://www.manufacturing.net/News/2011/09/Safety-AP–Quake-Risk-To-Reactors-Greater-Than-Thought/?et_cid=2024751&et_rid=45603233&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.manufacturing.net%2fNews%2f2011%2f09%2fSafety-AP–Quake-Risk-To-Reactors-Greater-Than-Thought%2f

Better link – for future reference:
http://notrickszone.com/2011/09/03/fred-singer-at-suppressed-seii-presentation-1976-to-2000-warming-thats-fake-it-doesnt-exist/#comments

James Evans says:
September 3, 2011 at 3:06 am
“In other words, temperatures started shooting up when we began sticking thermometers all over the place. Don’t you get it? It’s the thermometers! They’re causing the warming! I’m pretty sure that if we destroy all the thermometers, this global warming thing will just go away.”
Is that a lame attempt at deriding skepticism? Well, in case you don’t know, GISTEMP made a huge jump in the nineties by getting rid of about 4,500 thermometers; they deleted the cooler ones.

Also, in Europe there are temperature stations reporting for 200 years and more so I must call your hypothesis debunked.

Crazy Pete’s Enviro Friendly Galleria

DirkH says:
“Is that a lame attempt at deriding skepticism?”
No. Actually it’s a lame attempt at deriding the consensus. You don’t find it odd that, according to the consensus position, temperatures started to go up just as we started to measure them?
Take a look at the hockey stick graphs – there are a few on Wikipedia.

Smokey, where do you get them from. +1.
When’s the next ‘Bama Bingo game?

Pipeline protest silliness.
“Recent actions, both on the ground and the web, show the desperation and lack of logic of those protesting against the Keystone XL pipeline.”:
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/pipeline-protests/1141042727001

@ AlexS
Great story.

Since this is an open thread, I thought I’d get my two cents worth in about those of you who talk about the “Thought Police” – referring to that great novel 1984. I’ve got news, the thought police are alive and living among us, and it’s not the AGW crowd.
Think the story was in the WSJ a couple of weeks ago. It told of a business man who, for a fee, will research web postings of individuals…people who are applying for a job. Seems employers want to know about any postings that you and I, as prospective employees of a company, make on the internet. Of course, to remove a person from consideration based on web postings would, seems to me violate the First Amendment, but I’m sure there are a couple thousand reasons for not getting a job, and of course the web search had nothing to do with it.
It used to be that what an employee does on their own time, with the exception of criminal activity, was off limits to employers. Not any more. Your comments on this site are fair game for an employer, and a visit to a site like this could cost you future employment.
Posting on company time – sure I get that…unless that’s part of your job description. But this, this goes beyond that so far that it makes me ill. I just thought you’d all want to know
PS – INTHEDEN is owned by me, so I’m posting with the bosses permission…
Mike

@ Smokey (September 3, 2011 at 6:27 pm)
Thanks – I can barely see the screen for the tears rolling down my eyes! I needed a good laugh.

Smokey, I particularly enjoyed you “Click 22”, but all were smile provoking.
However, in a previous ‘Open Thread‘, you showed an unrealistic road-sign concerning a Northern Hemisphere view of Australia and I was not at all amused.
Below find something that is more real and genuinely amusing in Oz road signs, in a Melbourne suburb near to me:
http://www.autoblog.com/2008/05/06/mystery-joker-installing-funny-road-signs/
I particularly like the “Hump” one, although the authorities and PC profundities are clearly not in support.

Since this is an open thread, I thought I’d propose some ideas.
We know that general upward/downward air movement causes compression (warming) & expansion (cooling), respectively. This cannot produce any net atmospheric warming since the volume of atmosphere is fixed — any downward movement must be accompanied by equal upward movement somewhere.
OK. But look at this more closely. Where exactly are these actions occuring? As air moves downward, it is compressed & the final state is reached at the surface. The “heat” of this compression ends up at the surface. Chinook winds on the lee side of the Rockies is a good example.
Now, an equal amount of air must rise to counteract this. Air rises, expands & cools. But the cooled air is now up in the atmosphere, away from the surface. It doesn’t cool the surface unless rain/rain-cooled air falls out of the rising air which doesn’t happen everywhere where the rising air is (and doesn’t occur at all on Venus).
This brings up my question — does the bulk action of upward/downward air movement actually warm the surface, but cool the higher atmospheric levels? Note: there is no net heating here.
This might help explain to some extent why Venus is so hot (assuming there is sufficient upward/downward air movement). The potential compression (& heating) of downward moving air on Venus is huge — from the thin upper atmosphere to the deep, high-pressure surface. This seems to me that it might produce high surface temps (& matching, cooler upper-air temps) w/o invoking GHG effects.
Feel free to pick to pieces.

Thanks Blade, interesting stuff, I will look it over if I ever find the time…
The SEC is going through the high yield REITS looking for stuff. Instead of shutting down pump & fullers like Martha Stewart. MLP’s maybe next… they are really something.

A serious question, if anyone is still reading this thread.
Doesn’t Arctic ice act as an insulator, and limit the amount of heat radiated to space from the Arctic Ocean? As the ice extent has reduced in the past 11 years or so, the minimum extent occurs well after the period of maximum sunlight. Therefore, many more hours are spent radiating heat rather than absorbing sunlight from or to the ice-free ocean. The albedo effect is likely much, much less than the radiative effect.
Could this explain (at least in part) why the oceans are cooling and sea level is not rising?
Finally, is there any scientific study into the radiative effect (that is, cooling) of the ice-free areas of the Arctic?
Thanks in advance.